Darkness Within
by Vixen of Light
Summary: The World of Darkness is never finished with Kari...COMPLETE
1. Chapter the First

A/N: A small explanation. Please read this first! This is about Kari and the World of Darkness, of which the Dark Ocean is a part. I read a theory that perhaps the Dark World is where evil Digimon go to be reborn, or like the 'hell' of the Digital World. And it has always been after Kari, its greatest enemy. . .so this, therefore, is post Season Two, where the evil is trying to find a way back to the world. . .so.  
  
Also, in case its not obvious (you can never tell, OK?!), the Gabumon featured here is NOT Matt's Gabumon, 'K?  
  
I hope it makes sense. It may not. It may be confusing. That's fine, I like CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. Not flames. OK.  
  
-  
  
It had almost seemed innocent the first time, natural, insofar as the Digital World was natural. She had been with Gatomon, however, and a couple of the other Digidestined, rushing past, and she had merely taken a glance at the place, wondered why it drew her eyes to it. Now she was back, and alone, she was beginning to see beyond the perceived glamour of the area. Had it been Ken who had told her the significance of the scenery, with his dark, penetrating eyes boring into her soul, so full of knowledge. He had seen so much, that unyielding spirit, enough to know what was represented. Not even bird Digimon flew here.  
  
To recall her first sighting, Kari had to go back a few years, to the days of Arukenimon and the Spires. The, this place had nestled, a mark of nature. It had been autumn in the Digital World, the skies had been kinder then -now they were empty, wide, so high. . .forcing you to believe that there had to be something there, something of flat, dark knowledge.  
  
The little plateau before the actual. . .gate. . .was well known to her - baby Digimon played there sometimes, filled the place with light and young laughter, not dark sin and the misty, mindless shrieks that echoed in Keri's mind. The babies never ventured further - beyond the plateau was forbidden, too far from Primary Village, and besides, the babies' trepidation pushed them back. Only if they woke in the night, sweat- drenched, remembering a voice, or a touch, insidious calling, did they know, when partial memory is worse than full memory. And Kari had watched, chilled and yet fascinated, wondering how the baby Digimon knew what their elders missed. What secret they saw now but lost with age.  
  
In her heart, she knew. And those bare, dead trees, white bleached bones, they knew. The Digital sun rising above her, fooling her with that all- pervading light, He knew. And in the depths of her soul, that part that responded to fear and darkness, oh, she knew.  
  
It was indented, the grassland before the. . .gate. . .with seven deep steps - long inlets, like scars in the earth, leading up to Where One Never Goes. They could have occurred naturally. Perhaps not. The baby Digimon played on the first six. No paw, claw or foot had touched the seventh, without coming outwards first, for aeons. The numbering bothered Kari, touching the back of her spine with ice, freezing her. Seven was one of THOSE numbers. Now, thinking back, she knew it had been Ken who had told her that, her oddly too. . .real friend, who had explained. Kari wished she could tell him more, but she believed that Light alone could vanquish Darkness.  
  
She hadn't been alone, the first time she had seen the place, but the others had wandered off in search of a Spire, shouting to each other happily, jogging towards the tower in the distance. Kari had lagged behind. Her thoughts did not always notice beyond the immediate panorama of vision - hers could be a child's mind, concerned only with the forward and the now. So she did not see the periphery - the total emptiness around her; the trees, bereft of cover, leaning like broken finger-bones, leering as skulls, or the flicker of the faint lights around them, sometimes formless, sometimes. . .not. She had walked forward, mind open, wondering why she heard the place call to her, counting the steps, and thinking.  
  
One. . .two. . .(so long this walk). . .three. . .four. . .five. . .(darker here, cooler. Is that the sun still shining? Seems odd - He's so far away now). . .six. . .and she had paused. Beyond seven was The Barrier. She automatically thought of it as such. Bleached bones, rising on the crest of the hill, dying. Faint breeze in the bare branches, whispering with some agony so profound that it was beyond pain. Not that she understood. She only heard a rustle, not laughing shrieks of torture.  
  
She mounted the Barrier, scrambling slightly. She looked over the crest, down. It was as deep to the valley below as to hell.  
  
There were seven of them, too, in each of the three circles she saw. Moss grew on their blank faces, inexorable as death. There was a faint trace of glittering data in their cracks, ingrained, unwilling to let go of a history. Still her unknowing mind told her nothing, the silence had no warning. The very air seemed thick, heavy, and the light that fell was reddened by the shadows. The place held shadows, it called darkness to it, these stones. Circles of standing stones, concentric circles, diminishing in a rough spiral, taller than the young Kari was, and than the older Kari would become. At that time, so quiet, harmless. No signs of another world, just innocent nature.  
  
A voice behind her had startled her from her reverie.  
  
"Coming, Gatomon!" she had shouted, and scrabbled back, tripping slightly, hands sinking into the earth for balance, shoes sliding on the ground. She had pulled away, without a backward glance, and, wiping her hands off quickly, ran to catch up with her friends. Later, she would wish she had ignored the call and gone further in, for it may have warned her.  
  
At home, the nightmares began. She believed them to be so, although they seemed so real, and every smell, touch and sound was total and acute. The first night, she lay sleeping, her mind blank, curled in warm blankets. Gatomon's snuffling breathing from the foot of the bed was the only other sign of life.  
  
The noise came.  
  
'Come. Come. . .' not a voice, more a pulsing thought that she picked up on. She opened her eyes and saw him.  
  
He was an outline, more. Dirt-encrusted, flecked with foam, one or two single hairs touched with data-blood. Fur cropped so short, liquid eyes murky, fathomless. He turned, and she saw a scarred wound in his chest. A patch of white skin, long left, but no hair regrown there. It throbbed, dropping spots of blood, evaporating instantly.  
  
"A Gabumon?" she whispered, bleary eyes focussing slowly on the creature.  
  
"Come. I am a friend. I have to warn you," The word he used was not 'friend' but the closest word to it in his language. I'm hearing the language of the dead, thought Kari.  
  
"Why. . .how, are you here?"  
  
"The words were breathed out on a sigh. "I was tortured to what I am now by Piedmon. It is how I know what I know. Follow me."  
  
She rose, as if made of only smoke and mist herself, and followed.  
  
Her nostrils were filled with him. The heady, vile scent of dirt, bitter blood, metal and fear and pain. He stank of the earth he had been buried in. And death - the scent of blackness and eternal horror. They moved, (not walked, simply moved, Kari had no recollection of physical movement) over grass, hills, and up to those seven steps. Kari had not been looking at the world around her: how they got to the Digital World was a mystery. Now the air was thick, drawing them forward. Yet he did not go. He stopped on the seventh step, his foam flecked lips parted. A faint wisp of moonlight hit him, and she saw the mazy, mud-covered skin, patched by scars, the lights flickering over his eternally bleeding wounds. "Your destruction, and the destruction of all you hold dear, is near. The Barrier was not made to be broken again."  
  
Fainting was as seeping slowly down into muddy nothingness. 


	2. Chapter the Second

A/N: Digimon bleed, right? Ogremon did. . .but it must also be data. I'm not well-versed on the dying-process of Digimon. This may not be technically correct, but I did what I could.  
  
Also. . .it got a bit more, uh, dare I say psychotic? Than I intended. It's a bit of a gore-fest in places, really, this part especially. Be warned if you don't like blood/don't want to think I'm insane/feeling queasy/unhappy with death in stories that you will probably not like this much. If you've come from one of my fluffy stories looking for more fluff, this ain't the place. Click the little 'back' button at the top. But if you want to read it. . .that's great! ^^  
  
-----  
  
When Kari woke, she was in her home, alone, apart from the still-sleeping Gatomon. The words of the. . .creature (she would not name him, as her own partner, as Digimon) still echoed in her whirling mind. If she looked back, she would realise it was with the coming of the following month in which it all began.  
  
The memory faded, as all memories do, to fleeting mists, and only once or twice in the resulting few weeks did she wake and recall, slippery with fear and foreboding, those blood-flecked scars, the foamy lips, the vacant, forever sorrowing eyes. But with the new month, it returned, cold, seeping into her dreams, into her life. And it came in the form of a single baby Digimon.  
  
-  
  
"He's. . .deleting!" The cry reached her as she wandered the Digital World one day - a fine sunny day, the grass vivid beneath her feet, even as each footfall killed the blades beneath her soles, with her yet unaware.  
  
Gatomon tilted her delicate head, listening to the cries with growing dismay.  
  
"Is anyone there? Help. . .!" It rose, fell, itself dying.  
  
"I'm coming!" called Kari, feet breaking into a run, Gatomon pounding along beside her, unthinking of any aid she could lend, only wishing to help.  
  
When she reached the two figures, Palmon and Tanemon, she knew it was hopeless. The baby's tiny head was battered beyond repair, flickering as the deletion process took hold. It could no longer move or cry out - only the eyes pleaded with Kari.  
  
While Gatomon questioned the Palmon, her leafy hands clamped to her mouth with horror and sadness, Kari bent to the Tanemon. From the corner of her eye, she saw the other two standing frozen, the Palmon's eyes white-ringed and silent now, her fear so great that it put her in stasis rather than pushed her to madness.  
  
This is what its all about, thought Kari blearily, faint dreams brushing the edge of her consciousness. Not war or sex or friendship - only the noble, hopeless battle against death. I've faced it down before, and here I am again. . .waiting.  
  
She rose a little, as if to turn and leave, but then the Tanemon's tiny lips parted. She gazed down, and saw not the veiled suffering of a dying creature, but a Digimon, a real Digimon, who had once played, and laughed and lived. . .now nothing more than a memory (and there's the thing, hissed a thought that was not her own, the memory, because you know how it feels to have death and darkness in your veins), a gently crushed husk that would laugh no more.  
  
"Ah. . .hh" whispered the creature.  
  
"What?" Kari whispered, seeing only visions black with blood and water.  
  
"Its. . .not the real place, Kari," the Tanemon's eyes rolled madly, filling with crimson stains as the last drops of blood seeped from its brain.  
  
This isn't happening, thought Kari. I am not standing over a dying Digimon who tells me my name when I have never seen her before in my life and that IT is not the real place which I think I already know. . .  
  
"Of what?" she cried, louder than she had intended. Gatomon's head whipped round as if pulled by magnets to look at her.  
  
"Came for me. . .needs strength. . .will come for you. . ." so faint, the voice! The Tanemon was weakening now. . .yet a light in its eyes was almost unholy, a mad, capering thing - but dying. Always dying.  
  
"Extinguish illumination, Queen-of-Light. . ."  
  
Kari leaned in, desperate. "What?"  
  
Once more, the Digimon's hot, insane eyes fixed Kari. "Ah. . ." The light extinguished. Certainly there was no-one there now - nothing there. For a while, Kari was unaware of nothing, of the Palmon's wails, the data dissolving before her eyes, Gatomon shaking her. . .nothing but those writhing red eyes. And the words. . .  
  
She fled blindly. She did not stop trembling for a long time.  
  
-  
  
Gatomon questioned her too, at home, tried to get Kari to tell her the words that still burned in her mind. Kari ignored not only Gatomon but everyone else, listening only to her partner telling her that the Palmon had found the Tanemon by some inlets, dying, and that she had been trying to take the baby Digimon to Primary Village for help.  
  
Instead, Kari slept.  
  
It was in her dreams too. The ruby-eyed Tanemon, outward wounds not the real horror, inside wounds so much worse, calling her from the night.  
  
"Gabumon told you. . .resist the calls. . .remember the warning?"  
  
The voice changed, melted, until it was no longer a voice. Just words in her blood-shot darkness. Not the Tanemon. Something else. . .  
  
"I'm always here. I'm here to remind me that where there is Light, there is Darkness, that they will consume each other one day. . ." Kari rolled and cried in her hazy dreams, but was unheard, and beyond help.  
  
Now it was Gatomon's voice.  
  
"Its coming. . .so many have died for it. . ."  
  
"How do you KNOW?" Kari called to her partner in the darkness, but heard only barking laugher, endlessly rising and falling.  
  
"Its power is growing. . .it. . .wants. . ." Gatomon's voice died in a wailing shriek, and Kari knew that the real Gatomon would produce no sound as demonic as that.  
  
The fear was appalling, but the horror was worse. The voices cried on and on, while Kari lay helpless, dread and loathing knowing at the depths of her soul, paralysing her, forcing her to hear their message, until it drove her insane. . .to a gibbering, writhing wreck, forever with the knowledge of darkness yet her mind so lost she could never tell of it.  
  
And on. . .and on. . . 


	3. Chapter the Third

A/N: In the original version of 'His Master's Voice' (aka 'Dagomon's Call), the 'Scubamon' wanted Kari not to be their queen but to mate with them to produce more of their number, presumably to worship Dagomon. I know, eugh, but it is the honest-to-gods truth. So that's what I went with, more or less, here. Hence the 'procreation' references.  
  
-  
  
Kari knew then that it had her, and possessed her. It dominated her thoughts; she could, waking or dreaming, see nothing else but it. Lapping black waves washing towards her feet, a million shades of charcoal. And it was Ken whom she had to ask, before it destroyed her. It may anyway. . .but she had to know.  
  
His amazing midnight eyes were, as ever, fey, knowing. Gatomon curled in a corner of Ken's living room to doze fitfully, as the humans moved into another room, speaking in hushed tones, as if afraid of spies overhearing them.  
  
"It was said that a sacrifice ring of stones still existed in the Digital World, from the first days. And stone circles are gates between worlds. . ."  
  
It seemed to Kari that she heard nothing beyond the word, 'sacrifice'. Her frozen heart shattered.  
  
"The diminishing spirals of order from chaos, or chaos from order, in inverse. One of the oldest symbols of power, and not always a good one. The spirits dwelling in the circles were usually benign. . ." Ken's voice droned on as if merely reciting something he had heard a long time ago. ". . .but they were sometimes evil, looking for a mate with whom to procreate, or a victim to possess, to feed their lusts for blood."  
  
Kari's head bobbed, her eyes unseeing. Ken's low calm voice continued.  
  
"When you were taken before, what was it that. . .they. . .wanted?"  
  
Kari's answer was lost in a scream, a shriek of real, bard-sharp fear. The girl's head whipped to the opening to the living room through which it had come, but Ken was faster. "Stay here!" he hissed as he leapt through the doorway to the darkness beyond, towards the shattering scream.  
  
Kari was rooted to the spot, unable to stop the flow of gabbled words.  
  
"Dagomon, Daemon, they're coming for me. . .oh dear gods, help me. . ."  
  
"Stop that!" Ken's voice was sharp, a slap in the face. Her eyes focussed again, and she stared at the shape in the doorway until it took form.  
  
Ken came slowly through the door, Wormmon at his side, gazing up at his partner. In the boy's arms was Gatomon, trembling as she had not done for years. Her appearance shocked Kari - the look in her eyes was unimaginable.  
  
The feline Digimon raised her head a fraction of an inch, a strange light in her ever-luminous blue eyes. A light which was oddly familiar to Kari.  
  
"Kari!" The she-cat's voice was shrill. "You're. . ." she jumped from Ken's arms, ran, and to Kari's astonishment, prostrated herself at her partner's feet, almost purring with fear and relief, no care for her usual dignity.  
  
For a moment, it was not her best friend at her feet. It was a Tanemon, an insane light, so similar, in its tortured eyes. Then the moment was gone, and Gatomon's bright, troubled eyes met hers.  
  
"What was it?" asked Kari softly.  
  
When Gatomon responded, her voice was not fluid, or sibilant, as usual, but a cracked ice-floe, a shriek, horrible to hear - low yet resonant.  
  
"I was dreaming," she said. "I dreamt that you were dying. There was a demon, and it was. . .eating you, and you. . .screamed, and screamed, and there was nothing I could do. . ." she gazed at Kari in naked terror.  
  
She had lost years of her ages, she was a baby Digimon again, alone, afraid in case a monster answered her calls.  
  
Well. . .one had.  
  
-  
  
Kari stepped back. "I've got to go," she said, her voice rising to hysterical pitch. "I need. . .I have to look for. . .I'm out of. . ." But she couldn't think of anything she needed or was out of.  
  
Except time.  
  
"Take care," Ken whispered as Kari bent to pick up Gatomon, pure fear in her eyes.  
  
"I'll try," promised Kari, feeling Ken and Wormmon's eyes boring into her back even as she left. Outside the door she stood, and murmured, "I just don't know if I can,"  
  
-  
  
And yet it was so strangely. . .attractive. Death - a holy rite of worship. She was made of Light, so it had been said, and had been told by spirits on both side of the dusk and dawn that Light and Darkness belonged together. Breathe your last gasps of breath as you die for a greater purpose. The blood pounded in Kari's veins, her eyes saw nothing but sparks of florescence on the blackness of eternity. To cause death, others and own - Kari had never imagined it. To her it was wrong, a sin, committed only by evil. . .and yet her mind was full of it. To stand face to face with your opposite, to be one of the two forces behind the universe and let it consume you to death. . .It seemed right, as if it was meant to be done. From the beginning of time it had been realised, and she had to continue the pattern.  
  
As a bubble rising from the murky reaches of memory, a thought emerged. That Gabumon, she thought, said Piedmon, a creature of Darkness, had killed him. And he remained in existence, some sort of watcher between the worlds. And the Tanemon, by her own emission, had died for it. Horribly, by the wounds that she still woke to see in the cold reaches of midnight. So she could follow them, see what mysteries they saw. She could ask Tanemon how she had known Kari's name, ask Gabumon where he now dwelled, what it felt like. Maybe the killing of Light would destroy the Darkness too, she mused. Upset the balance, let them drown in themselves. She could fool them, burn them from the inside out when they thought they had destroyed her. . .or maybe it would swear her its equal, the Darkness. Make her its queen as it had wished before, a cold, fair blank-eyed ruler, the reward of submission to something so beautiful and powerful that it had no choice but to own her.  
  
The revulsion in herself shrieked desperately in the back of her mind, but another power held sway over her. This was a part of herself she had never imagined or explored, a savage, powerful part, which filled her veins with spirit and boiling blood, fire, desire and an unholy attraction to the idea of becoming a part of that Darkness. A mad joy rose in her hear, drowning her own voice which shrieked in horror and would continue to do so down all eternity, just for knowing what she knew now about herself.  
  
And yet. . .and yet. . .it was as if she was not the one in control. As of something else had her, and would destroy her, if needs be, to feed the power of that deadly, silent world beyond the stones, beyond the ancient ground. Something not quite. . .mortal, or. . .real. Something beyond comprehension or control, which lay, malignant, shrieking for blood, pain, Darkness. . .there was a beauty in fear, an emotion that was not love, but certainly close. The cry that escaped Kari's pale lips was one of a wild, insane desire, a call of Light to Darkness, a need. . .  
  
That night was the hardest yet. 


	4. Chapter the Fourth

A/N: This is it. The end. No, that's it. . .  
  
Dedicated to my faithful reader, Miaow227! Thanks for reading this bizarre little tale. . .hope you enjoy the end!  
  
-  
  
Kari no longer had any recollection of time. She could not have said now how long it had been since her first sight of the Boundary, of the gate which called her. Her days and nights collided, spiralling out of control. She was part of another world, a world where time had no meaning, where nothing existed but. . .the darkness within. It was both beautiful and terrible. . .and a voice called her – Dagomon, she believed. She had heard it before. Sibilant. . .echoing. . .and in her dreams, worst of all, were the eyes. Eyes of a snake, red-rimmed, deep, and the colour of brimstone and burning blood, watching her. And so, that one day, she forced Gatomon to wait with Tai on some flimsy pretext and no longer sure of motive, purpose or consequence, set out alone for that Boundary.  
  
Somewhere in the root of her soul, the fear still lay. It was heightened until it was beyond fear – it was a part of her, a chamber of her heart, almost beyond endurance now. It ate away at her soul until she was empty, entirely possessed of the fear – and the demon-spirit within her. She thought at one point that she may have lost her mind. Perhaps there was no Boundary – perhaps she was just out here, alone, talking to ghosts and believing in stones. . .her. . .alone. . .going insane. . .and -  
  
"I'm. . .so glad I caught you!" Agumon's voice was gasping, for he had been running. His heavy paws were mud-soaked, and his eyes bright with exertion.  
  
"Wh – what?" Kari snapped back to cold sanity, to the Digimon's worried voice.  
  
"She. . .had some sort of dream. Gatomon, I mean. Sounds silly. . .chasing you all this way over it, but. . .something's not right. As I ran, I could even hear the earth beneath me saying so. . ."  
  
Even Agumon feels it, thought Kari. Aloud she said evenly: "I think you'd better tell me the dream."  
  
"It was. . .mostly mumbled. She was almost delirious. When she woke, she forced me to come and find you – she was catatonic, couldn't move. It was. . .bizarre. She kept screaming – Dagomon the Terrible had killed you. It seemed almost – to be prophetic. I'm. . .glad to see you well."  
  
Kari drained of all emotion. The power in her took her utterly. It was done. "Did she say anything else?"  
  
"Only one thing I could make out. She said: Gabumon says its too late,"  
  
-  
  
". . .it seemed to be prophetic. . ." "Remember the warning. . ." ". . .too late. . ." He has had many different names down the years, thought Kari beneath the cacophony of phrases drowning her mind, but I saw nothing wrong with the one my Gatomon gave him. Dagomon the Terrible. Lord of all dark powers. Lord of dank, wet things left in the ground to rot. Lord of the mystery.  
  
She became suddenly aware that she had paused, and was tracing spiral patterns in the dirt on the ground with her fingers. Her mouth dry, horrified, she stood, scrubbed she shapes out, dust rising into her face, and began to walk on.  
  
When she saw the place, the silent stoned, it was as if the gods had confirmed it.  
  
'Now you know that its right,'  
  
Not a voice. It was what had haunted her dreams, 'spoken' to her then, held her soul in its grip. It did not speak, but in her silent, aching mind, she heard what it had to say.  
  
'As if ordained. Do it,'  
  
I'll never be able to pass those trees, that Barrier, thought Kari, but no sooner had she thought this, then came an answer.  
  
'You will. Just don't look down. One foot, that's it. . .see how easy it is? Now. . .go,'  
  
And she began to move, not looking at how she could do this, only trusting her feet. Up one step. . .two. . .behind the Barrier, tiny lights flickered and Kari froze.  
  
'Its just the light. It carries,'  
  
The Barrier was no longer still. It was a thousand white, bare bones, clicking, moving inexorably towards her. Jawbones and femurs, ulnas and mandibles and skulls, softly, perpetually snapping, hissing.  
  
Kari's eyes focussed again. The illusion, if that's what it was, had gone. The maddening clicking, the grinding of ancient teeth, ceased.  
  
The silence was more deafening.  
  
She dragged herself up those heavy inlets, the air tenebrous with fear, yet her own dark mind a blank. As she gazed up to The Barrier, to the stones waiting beyond, she saw something else. The mounds of earth, not unlike the memorials she had made for her Numemon and the other Digimon so long ago, no longer seemed random. They seemed to have fallen (why use that word? Thought Kari. Placed, maybe, or. . .) in a spiral. As she looked closer, she understood what they were. Once, presumably, they had been graves. But they were damaged, as if something had clawed its way out from beneath each, and escaped.  
  
So. . .we did not destroy them. . .Kari thought dazedly. Everything we've ever done was for nothing – they're still here.  
  
'Do it,'  
  
The pulsing thought returned, knocking thought from her mind, filling her with its work, need, desire. . .  
  
'You are alone. Come. Sometimes you will see a flicker, or a shadow, but it is only insects. Come.'  
  
She was not alone. Her realisation had broken something of its fooling of her, and she saw clearly. The flickers were not merely insects. They were spirits. The air was full of them, you'd have to be insane not to see that. Familiar shapes, a Devimon? A SkullSatamon? Calling her, their silver voices tinged with the horror of eternal darkness. . .  
  
'Come,'  
  
She did so.  
  
-  
  
In the very centre of the spiral, it was if she had been in any other part of the Digital World. The air flowed freely, the flickers were gone. Only. . .only one dark shape remained, lurking beyond those centre stones.  
  
Now what? Kari thought. She glanced around, her eyes flat and stupid, and down. Something was in her hand, feeling almost welded to the bone. Where did I pick up a knife? Thought Kari, staring at it blankly. It shimmered slightly, making her eyes ache. Did I bring it from home? Confused, she stepped forward.  
  
The moment she left the spiral's protection, she saw Him. She knew him from old, now, a shadow no more – tentacles of some kind, deformed, over-long arms, mostly formless. Only the head was clear - scaly, upturned eyes, snake-like, twisted sneer. Leathery wings protruded from his back. A single tentacle reached out towards her.  
  
For a moment, the real Kari took over. The Kari that was broken from terror, from horror, her gibbering soul screaming to her mind to run, wishing for bright sunny days, smiling faces and anything but the things that crawl and lurk and wail on the nightside of the universe.  
  
That was Dagomon! That was the demon that rules here – Dagomon passed within a yard of me!  
  
But then he withdrew, sneering still, leaving her. Whatever force had come for her, it had passed on at the last moment, withdrawn that immortal hand.  
  
'Go,'  
  
Yet its control of her was back. She stepped back into the circle, staring at the glittering, marbled knife in her hand. Its handle was gilt carved, and fitted so perfectly in her palm. She held it thoughtfully to her throat, feeling her pulse pounding against the cold metal. She wondered dully what it would feel like, seeing the metal running with her own warm blood, the force of her life and Crest.  
  
Crest. . .Light. She stared into the knife, into the shining blade and her reflection therein. She seemed almost to be glowing, a faint, desperate flicker. Her eyes stared back at her from the blade. Their deep colour had faded to molten earth, filled with pain and unhappiness. The Light was gone.  
  
'No-one can take Light from you. . .' At first, it was a whisper. Nothing compared to the laughing shrieks of the Dark World, calling her irresistibly. She shook her head, and raised the knife once more. But the female voice broke in again.  
  
'You are their enemy. . .never give in,' "Gatomon?" Kari whispered, her tongue thick, her voice unrecognisable to herself.  
  
'We are with you. . .Light is a part of everyone. . .you are the focus of all of us. . .' Tai's voice, TK's, Patamon's, joined Gatomon's tones. Now they began to override the hissing of the Darkness, until they were shouting, singing. 'You have enough strength, Kari! You have to believe it!'  
  
The chorus rose in Kari's brain. Her friends' voices were joined by others: Gennai, Oikawa, and their voices were overlaid by even something more – the Digital Gods: Azulongmon, Ebonwumon, Zhuqiaomon, and Baihumon. Their song rose higher and higher, until the insidious murmurs of the Darkness became smothered, more desperate, cries of pain.  
  
Kari froze, torn with indecision. The chorus rose once more – and stopped utterly, note questioning. 'Only you can chose, Kari. . .'  
  
For an eternity, she waited. Darkness and Light were silent, waiting. The knife in her palm was burningly hot to her skin. For the first time in so long – Kari had control of her mind again.  
  
She screamed. The thing in her head screamed in unison, the whole earth trembling. The knife melted from her grasp, dropped to the earth below.  
  
It has a power, Kari realised. But I am strong. I will not die for the Darkness.  
  
The knife forgotten, she fled blindly from the stones, hearing only the writhing and wailing of a hundred spirits and one, behind her.  
  
-  
  
Never again would Kari think of it, not even in her dreams. It faded, and left Kari with only the knowledge of how strong evil could be. . .and goodness. But IT would wait, bide ITS time, for IT knew that there were more Digidestined now, more coming in every day. One would pass ITS way, pause to admire the area, laugh at old superstitions of devils and dark oceans.  
  
Maybe they would like to enter.  
  
-  
  
He was young. On his shoulder sat a Botomon, large eyes shining. He had had nightmares recently, confusing nightmares of pain and indecision, pulsing outlines of vile, wailing darkness, bones, stones, light, dark and fog and choking air.  
  
And yet, they were oddly. . .attractive. He felt those silent stones call him, soft and black. And a thought. . .no, a. . .sound in his mind. He could see nothing wrong with the suggestions it made. No, in fact, it seemed right. Like something that was meant to be.  
  
'You'll love it. . .its what you want. Come.' 


End file.
